


A Tree Grows in Williamsburg

by 27dragons, tisfan



Series: Nights in Sandbridge [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Minor Character Death, Past Underage Sex, Tree Climbing, past Bucky Barnes/Alexander Pierce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 10:30:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11689785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Bucky has a tree, in Williamsburg, where he climbs when he needs to think deeply about something. This story explores what exactly that tree means to him, and the things he's brought into its branches.





	A Tree Grows in Williamsburg

**Author's Note:**

> This will likely not make much sense if you have not read any of the other [Sandbridge](http://archiveofourown.org/series/700245) stories; we strongly recommend at least reading [Safe and (the) Sound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10573350) first.

_The first clear memory James Buchanan Barnes has is of falling._

_He knows that he should have more memories than that, and if he concentrates, he can summon a few. Like his sister’s seventeenth birthday, when she kissed a boy in her bedroom and Bucky told on her. The stinging rat-tail Becca gave him in retaliation a few days after is a little clearer. But neither of them is as clear and bright and indelible as the memory of falling._

_Even now, the memory haunts his dreams._

***

Winifred Barnes, Bucky’s mother, was a good-looking woman, tall and gray-eyed. She was an excellent cook, a skilled wood-carver, a capable seamstress, and an amatuer historian. The latter two interests served her well when she got involved in reenactment and joined the 3rd Virginia Regiment. Big Jim, her husband and Bucky’s father, thought the whole thing was ridiculous. He refused to dress up in “hot, fussy” Colonial gear and pretend to fight with antiquated weapons in battles long since decided. Much less cook outdoors, sleep in canvas tents, and shoot powder blanks at smaller groups of pretend Redcoats.

Bucky had heard from his sister about some of the arguments Winifred and Big Jim had, back before Bucky was born, but in the end, as usual, Winifred had her way. She was gone from home maybe five weekends out of the year. Big Jim didn’t want his kids underfoot while he tried to run the family restaurant, Dockside, on his own, so until Becca was sixteen, Winifred took both of the kids with her.

Becca hated it. It was always too hot or too cold, and the clothes were uncomfortable, and she didn’t like sleeping on a pallet of hay. The boys were boring and the girls insipid. She was expected to cook and darn socks and sit and be _ladylike_. She thought the whole thing was awful.

Whether it was because he was a boy or because of a difference in underlying personality, Bucky _loved_ going on his ma’s trips. He liked listening to the unit’s surgeon, with his case of tools and unguents, explain about amputation and leeches. He liked the freedom of running around all day with other kids and only having to report to his mother for meals. (Some of the other kids complained about having to help clean up after meals, but by the time Bucky was six, he’d been helping out in the kitchens at home, so dishes for three people was nothing.) He loved learning to load and fire the flint and powder muskets, and that was the only part of the whole thing that Big Jim was happy to listen to him talk about, after.

He was eight (and a _half_!) when he discovered the great tree on the green in Colonial Williamsburg. Market Days in mid-September was one of the biggest events of the year; dozens of units converged on the historical site, and the sea of canvas tents spread as far as the eye could see. Dozens of other kids ran through the wide paths between the tents, dressed in linen shirts and breeches. The cannons were fired regularly, rending the air with their loud booming.

The boiled leather shoes that were considered historically appropriate for children were not the best he could have selected for tree-climbing, but Bucky was eight (and a _half_!) and he didn’t stop to think about things like that. The tree had huge branches, some wider than a picnic bench. He was more than twenty feet up without even thinking about it, and by the time he found a good branch, he could barely see the ground through the leaves. Perched high, he stood on a branch, playing pirate. He could see the powder magazine from where he was, and no one could see him. It was terribly exciting.

But he’d forgotten about the cannons and when one of them fired, he startled, and lost his footing. The slick leather shoes gave no purchase, and he went down over the side.

He remembered, very clearly, hitting one large branch on the way down. His arm made a sudden, unexpected noise, and he screamed. Oh, he _screamed_. Hitting the branch slowed his fall. He tumbled the rest of the way down until he was laying flat on the hard-packed dirt under the tree.

Later, the nurse in the ER would tell his mother it was a miracle that he was still alive.

As it was, he broke his arm in three places and spent the next four months in a cast. (He met his best friend during those months. Steve wasn’t allowed to participate in gym class either because he had trouble with breathing, so the two boys sat together on the side of the gym and watched the other children and struck up a friendship.)

Being so badly frightened and injured changed things for Bucky. He hesitated to splash in the ocean, refused to climb even the short scrub pines near home. Stopped running pell-mell down the dock that gave the restaurant its name. Wouldn’t even step up on the stool to help decorate the Christmas tree. He could feel his mother’s eyes on him, but he tried to ignore it.

As soon as the weather warmed, Winifred took a day off. She put Bucky in their truck and drove them all the way to Williamsburg. It had never seemed so far before, but his ma didn’t say why they were going and Bucky was nine now and he had a sick suspicion it wasn’t a late birthday treat and the ninety minute drive seemed _forever_.

Bucky walked with his mom, all the way down Dog Street (he was a lot older before he discovered that it was really Duke of Gloucester Street, abbreviated by the locals to DoG). He started dragging his feet when she crossed the green, but Winifred didn’t stop.

“You need to go up, again, Jimmy Barnes,” she said. She looked at him, stern and kind and scary all at once. “I know you’re scared, but if you let it win, let the tree win, you’ll be backing down your whole life.” She cupped her hands to offer him a boost, and the look on her face said there was no getting out of it.

Bucky cried. He was too old to cry, he knew that, but he cried anyway. His arm hurt, where it had been broken. He was going to fall again.

Winifred merely watched and waited until his panic eventually subsided, then handed him a tissue and made him blow his nose. She cupped her hands again and waited some more.

His ma could have waited all day, Bucky knew. Finally, knowing he had no other choice, he put his foot in the stirrup formed by her hands and she boosted him onto that first branch. With a grunt of effort, his mother grabbed hold of the lowest branch and hauled herself up into the tree, too.

Bucky had been scared, but the sight of his ma climbing a tree startled him out of it. He’d never seen her do anything like that before. She passed him, scaling another fifteen feet or so. “Well, you gonna make me climb this tree all by m’self?”

That first bit, when he let go of the safety of the lowest branch, stood up, and reached, might have been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his short life. But he did it. Hooked his leg over the branch and pulled himself up. And again. And again. His ma kept just out of reach, until they got near to the top and Bucky realized he was right back where he’d been.

Ma stretched out on one of the branches, one leg on either side, chin balanced on her hands. Bucky did the same on the branch next to her, so he could watch her face instead of looking down at the ground.

“Fear’s not a bad thing,” she said, finally. “It keeps us alive, allows us to exercise some caution. But too much fear can freeze you up, make it hard to keep movin’ forward. And life don’t care much for you, if you’re standing still. Best way to live isn’t to never be afraid, but to be afraid… and do it anyway. That’s bravery, Jimmy.”

“Are you afraid?”

Ma smiled at him. “Always am,” she said. “These days, my fear’s a bit different. I’m afraid of bad things happening to you or your sister. I’m afraid of the restaurant failing. Of owing money. Of getting older. But life’s not gonna stop just because I’m afraid.”

“Are you afraid of being up in this tree?” Bucky attempted to clarify.

Ma looked at him, then looked down, then back at him. “You bet your buns I am,” she said. “But I’m up here anyway.”

***   

_Bucky is ten the first time someone calls him an “oops baby” to his face and it is another six months after that he understands the malice in that._

_He knows his mother is old, in the way children think all adults are old. Ma was over thirty when Dockside opened, and it was some years after that when Bucky’s sister came into the world. Becca is old in the way his sister was supposed to be old, a teenager as he was just starting school._

_He hadn't realized this made him an accident._

_He hadn't realized this made him_ unwanted _._

_A boy at school is picking on Steve, and Bucky intervenes. The boy tells Bucky that he's a mistake. That he was unplanned and therefore unwanted._

_He refutes it hotly, but the pieces fit together too neatly to dismiss the thought. Hasn't Becca always complained how he came along and ruined everything?_

_Bucky manages several months before he finally asks his Ma. He waits until they’re in Williamsburg, and spends an afternoon in the tree first, gathering courage._

_Ma tells Bucky that he was an unexpected delight. But not_ unwanted _, for all that they were surprised._

_Becca leaves home as soon as she can. She does not think Bucky is a delight, unexpected or otherwise._

_A year later, Bucky is forced up into the tree branches to try to come to sobbing acceptance that his best friend's mother is going to die. Everyone knows how sick Miz Rogers is. How terrible her husband is, that he left her as soon as she got too ill to work._

_Bucky feels terrible because he knows the truth. No one is going to miss Joseph Rogers._

_He isn’t supposed to know that, but sound carries near water. And he knows that Steve is not sad that Joseph Rogers was gone, that Miz Rogers isn’t unhappy about it. That they’re frankly grateful that he left. Steve’s dad was quick with his fists and the bruises that cover his friend’s arms are not always from the bullies at school. Bucky hears his mom talking with Steve’s mom about it._

_He hears Ma tell Miz Rogers not to worry. They'll take care of Steve. And they do._

_Bucky calls Steve Ma’s_ other _unexpected delight._

_Steve stays one night in the guest room after Miz Rogers passes on, and then a week sneaking in to cuddle with Bucky and cry for his momma. Ma finally moves a second bed into Bucky’s room. They don’t sleep in the separate beds for at least the first year, maybe longer. Bucky doesn’t know, exactly, when they stopped._

_He does know why, though. Big Jim sits both boys down, very stern and solemn, and explains why they have to stop. What people will think of them. How wrong it is. It’s not the first time Bucky hears the word_ faggot _and knows it applies to him, but it’s the first time it really hurts._

_They stop sleeping in the same bed._

***

Bucky loathed summers more than anything else. All his friends were out surfing or skating or getting into trouble, but not Bucky.

Bucky had a _job_. It was a boring job and he barely got paid for it, less than two dollars an hour, and that was ridiculous because the two waitresses were supposed to share tips with the busboy (that would be him), but they didn’t whenever they think Bucky’s mom wouldn’t notice, which was most of the time. About once a week, Dottie made a show of handing her tips over and Bucky just had to fucking eat it the rest of the time.

Steve helped, sometimes, but Bucky wasn’t comfortable with that for any number of reasons. Not the least of which was that Steve’s asthma acted up sometimes and made him gasp and choke from carrying heavy loads, and there wasn’t much money for doctors. Most of the time, Bucky would give Steve the easiest parts of the job -- wrapping the silverware in the napkins or wiping down the tables -- but when that was done Bucky preferred Steve to just sit on the back steps and sketch, or keep Bucky company while Bucky’s fingers turned pruney in the dishwater.

That day, the one when Bucky’s whole life changed, Steve’s asthma had been especially terrible. Ma had sent Steve up to the house to sit in the air conditioning and told Bucky to check in on him regularly, in case it got bad enough that they needed to run him up to the ER.

Bucky was coming down the stairs from his most recent check on Steve, where he might have malingered for longer than he should have, because avoiding work was a thing fourteen-year-old Bucky Barnes was getting damn good at. Halfway down, he heard a noise, unfamiliar, from the alley between the main building and the separate garage, where the trashbins cluttered up the walkway and Bucky’s bike often was left sprawled.

It was a deep, guttural sort of groan, followed by a breathy whisper. “God _, Alex…_.”

Bucky crept the rest of the way down the stairs, a strange, urgent panic pounding in his chest that tightened at his stomach and tingled against his scalp. He pressed up against the wall, listening, hands clenched.

“Yeah, that’s my good boy,” said another voice, this one recognizable. Alexander Pierce, the lawyer. His parents were rich; they owned several of the beach properties, one of which they used a few weeks of the year. The rest of them were rentals, ritzy ones. Everyone knew Alexander; he was gorgeous and the girls flocked to him whenever he was on the beach. He and his cronies owned the stretch of the beach with the volleyball nets, owned them by dint of defeating all comers in brutal games that left more than one summer tourist sand-scraped and bloody. And he did it with such a broad, sunny smile that the tourists were happy to be beaten by him.

Bucky slid all the way to the corner and stole a quick peek around.

Alexander’s eyes were closed, his hands tight in the hair of the man in front of him. And that was good, because Bucky froze on the spot, unable to move, and if Alexander had been any less preoccupied, Bucky would have been spotted immediately.

Alexander was pressed against the wall, his head tipped back, baring a delicious and sensual throat, his mouth was open. His pants were around his thighs.

The man in front of him -- one of the guys Bucky’d seen on Alexander’s volleyball team -- was on his knees, head bobbing back and forth with quick, urgent rhythm.

Bucky knew what a blowjob was, theoretically. He certainly had never gotten one, and he didn’t much believe the guys at school who said this or that girl had given them one, either. He didn’t know it looked like _that_. He didn’t know the person getting one would look… like that. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the scene, Alexander’s handsome face twisted into an expression of possessive, smug lust. Bucky couldn’t look away.

His heart was pounding in his chest, and then the blood rushed south. Bucky sprouted wood so hard and so fast it ached. He wanted… _wanted_. He knew he shouldn’t, that what Alexander was doing was-- His breath caught in his throat.

Alexander, the pride and prince of Sandbridge, _was gay_.

Alexander was as gay as Bucky was. He wanted -- _and did_ \-- the same things that Bucky wanted.

Strange, what a suddenly liberating thought that was. Bucky knew he was gay, he knew he favored men, he knew it was wrong, he knew other people had a list of derogatory words for it, that it disgusted them... But it had never before occurred to him that those things came from a place. That they came from a place of _knowing_ other people were gay.

Bucky sucked air, his chest seeming to break steel bands around it that he’d never known were there. Alexander’s eyes snapped open at the sound. He looked over his lover’s head, found Bucky peeking at them around the corner. Alexander’s brilliant blue eyes were piercing, full of heat and he met Bucky’s gaze without blinking.

He raised one tanned hand to his perfect mouth and pressed a finger across his lips.

_Shhhhh._

That was all. Alexander wasn’t embarrassed.

He wasn’t ashamed.

Bucky stayed in place, watching, groin aching with need, watching.

Alexander stiffened, a soft, whining moan coming from his throat and he shot his load, watching Bucky intently the whole time. The guy on his knees was irrelevant. Alexander wanted _Bucky_.

Bucky nodded, slow. Like a promise.

***

_Alex holds out the gold-linked bracelet, the expression on his face somehow stiff. “I can’t accept this, James,” he says. Bucky wishes that Alex wouldn’t call him that, but he doesn’t object. He’s never objected. Not to Alex._

“ _I want you to have it,” Bucky says, pressing the box back toward the older man. Not that Bucky is really a man himself, at just barely eighteen, but he feels like his whole world, his whole life, is ending. The bracelet, 18k gold and leather, represents most of his savings and Bucky wants, desperately, to see it against Alex’s skin. To know that some part of Alex will think about him, every day._

_They are under the tree, having this discussion in the grass._

_Alex had turned him away when Bucky had knocked on the door of his parent’s house, but had texted later to set up the meeting. Bucky’d had to talk very fast to get his ma to let him take the truck and drive to Williamsburg the day after Memorial Day, with so much work to do._

“ _James, honey, you need to move on,” Alex says, honestly regretful. He looks sad and he still reaches for Bucky’s hands and Bucky clings to them, to that gesture. “You have to know how precarious my position is. I can’t be suspected, it’ll hurt my career. I can’t be seen with you again, honey.”_

“ _But I love you.” It’s nothing, and Bucky knows it’s nothing. It’s worthless. But it’s all he has._

“ _And I love you, too,” Alex says, aware that he’s breaking Bucky’s heart. “I’ll always love you. I’ll always remember what we had, but it’s over now, honey. Okay?”_

“ _No,” Bucky says. He does not want this to be over, it can’t be over. It wasn’t enough._

_Alex wipes the tear off Bucky’s cheek with his thumb and tastes it. He offers a smile; Bucky would kill for that smile. “All right,” Alex says. “All right, James. I love you, you know I do, right? We can… I’ll get us a hotel. But we have to be careful, honey. And…”_

_Bucky agrees, he agrees to everything. Anything. Anything Alex wants, just don’t leave him, please don’t._

_Alex fucks him in the Motel Six and lets Bucky drive home._

_The next day, Alex brings his new boyfriend into the Dockside and watches with the merciless eyes of a shark as Bucky flees back to his room to sob himself sick._

***

“After that, It was a couple years before I was able to come back here,” Bucky said. “Not until Ma had passed, and everything just… fell apart. _Dad_ fell apart. He was never the same, after she was gone. By the end of that first summer after she was gone, I was pretty much running the place on my own. Came up here, a year after she died. I… don’t know. I feel closer to Ma here, than anywhere else. Even Dockside. At Dockside, she belonged to everyone. Here… here she was just mine.”

Tony had been mostly quiet through Bucky’s long recitation, occasionally humming or hissing or laughing as an anecdote called for it. It had taken Bucky a while to get started, and Tony thought if he interrupted more than that, it would stop the flood of thoughts and memories that Bucky very obviously needed to share. But god, it’d been hard to keep his mouth shut when Bucky talked about Pierce. The more he heard, the more of a slimebucket the man turned out to be.

Bucky tugged gently, leading them off the gravel-strewn path they’d been walking on, and across the grass toward an enormous tree. Tony looked up at it, and simultaneously saw why a child would feel a deep and abiding need to climb this tree, and also a nonsensical spurt of terror that Bucky had been _all the way up there_ with no one to catch him when he fell. He shivered, and held Bucky’s hand tighter. But it was a magnificent tree, no doubt about that. And Bucky seemed to have stopped talking for now, so he had to say _something_. “I’m glad you didn’t let him chase you off for good,” Tony said. “That would’ve been a shame. It’s gorgeous.”

Bucky dropped to one knee and cupped his hands. “Wanna go up with me?”

Tony hesitated. He’d never climbed a tree before. He could only imagine the furor it would have caused when he was a child. But Bucky was looking at him with that hopeful smile, and Tony was pretty much defenseless against that. _It’s a special thing,_ he thought. _He’s sharing it with you even though the last person he shared it with broke his heart._

Well, fuck if he was going to rank with Alexander fucking Pierce. He set a foot in Bucky’s cupped hands and reached up for the closest branch. It had to be easier than the climbing wall at the park, right? “Not too high?” he hedged anyway. “I’ve... never done this before.”

“Okay,” Bucky said. “Not too far. There’s a good set of branches, about four up from here.” Bucky stood, lifting, and Tony found himself halfway over the first branch without any effort on his part. Bucky took a few steps over and leaped, getting one hand on Tony’s branch and another on the one next to it and shoved himself through the fork with a grunt. “Used to be easier, before they took the picnic table away. I was shorter, then, too, though, so maybe I’m just remembering it being easier.”

“Well, you weigh more now,” Tony pointed out reasonably. He was half-sitting, half-kneeling on his branch, and looking around for the next decent handhold. There, that one wasn’t too far away. He pulled himself up onto his knees and grabbed it before putting his feet under him. Easier than the climbing wall at the park, but not nearly as stable. Every time Bucky moved, it seemed to shake the whole tree. Or at least Tony’s whole branch. He managed to pull himself up -- ug, how long had it been since he’d had to do pullups in gym class?

Bucky went up quick, his body flexing as he swung himself from branch to branch with the ease of practice. His shirt rucked up and he hissed as he scraped a bit of skin on the branch, but he got himself settled, back against the trunk, legs spread wide over on particularly huge branch. He hooked his foot under it on one side and offered Tony a hand. “We’ll sit here, yeah?” The branch had a fork about three feet away from the trunk, thick enough rest against. If Tony looked up and not _down_.

He took Bucky’s hand, and that was felt safer. Tony’s balance had been getting better by the time they’d put their surfboards away for the winter, but they’d gone out again in wetsuits as soon as the spring storms hit, and he’d felt as wobbly as a new kitten. Bucky would never let him fall, though. Bucky tugged, and Tony threw his leg over the branch, and they were settled. He looked up -- the sky was only visible in tiny spots between the still-pale spring green of the leaves. “Nice.”

“I always liked it,” Bucky said. He rested his head against the trunk. “Sometimes, I think I can still hear her. The firepit used to be over there.” He pointed to a spot maybe twenty feet from the base of the tree. Tony guessed. He didn’t really feel like looking down. “Remember one time, someone wanted me to powder monkey for the canon crew. ‘Hey, Winnie, where’s that boy o’ yours?’ ‘Up the tree,’ she said. ‘Think he’s got a crush.’” Bucky smiled, fond. “I did, too, but I didn’t know really know, you know? I didn’t think it was possible, I wouldn’t have believed anyone if they’d told me. That I could… that I could love a person as much as I love you, Tony.”

 _Same here_ , Tony thought. He loved Rhodey and Bruce like brothers, and he’d thought he loved Ty once, but that had really just been lust, mixed with gratitude for the man who’d helped him escape his father. Ty hadn’t loved him back, either, not really. Not the way Bucky did, the way Bucky was looking at him now, like _Tony_ was some kind of miracle. He couldn’t stand the space between them, suddenly, and let go of the branch to curl his hand around the side of Bucky’s neck, brushing Bucky’s jaw with his thumb. “Love you too,” he said.

Bucky turned his head and kissed Tony’s palm. “Good,” he said. “I um…” Bucky let go of the tree, rummaging through his pockets, then… “Close your eyes for like ten seconds, okay?”

Tony stared at him, but then took hold of the branch again and shut his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, and Bucky sounded nervous. “I was… you know, I kinda rehearsed this, even, but… Tony, I’d... Be honored if you’d agree to marry me.”

Tony’s eyes flew open. Bucky had a small box in one hand, the sort that everyone who’d ever watched a cheesy romcom was familiar with, black velvet and square. Bucky turned the box to face Tony and cracked the lid. His offering was simple; a gold band with a square sapphire, flanked by smaller, rectangle diamonds.

Tony couldn’t talk. He couldn’t even _breathe_. He hadn’t... They hadn’t been together for a whole year yet, and Tony already loved Bucky more than anything he’d ever felt before and oh _god_ , he was tearing up, and if he did that wouldn’t be able to see and he’d never be able to get down from this tree, he was just... “Oh my god,” he managed to squeak. “Are you-- You really mean that?”

“I really do,” Bucky said. “You’re the one for me, Tony. I… can’t even, I mean, if you’re… it could be a long engagement, or, you know --”

“Oh god stop it, _yes_ , of course, and also _no_ we’re not waiting. Well, you know, a little bit of waiting so we can do plans and have some ideas and did you have any particular time frame in mind but oh god I can’t shut up please make me shut up now--”

Bucky leaned forward and very gently brushed his mouth over Tony’s lips. “Give me your hand, baby.”

Tony scooted closer and then let Bucky take his hand. He waited until Bucky had taken the ring out of its padding and said, “If you drop that and we lose it in the grass, I’m going to laugh _so hard_.”

“You said yes,” Bucky said, balancing the ring between his thumb and forefinger. “Can’t get out of it now, even if we lose the ring forever.” But he didn’t drop it, merely slid it onto Tony’s left ring finger where it fit snug in place. “Ah, good job,” Bucky said, holding Tony’s hand up to admire it.

“Wouldn’t want out of it,” Tony said. He leaned in cautiously to kiss Bucky, slow and then hot. “That’s why I said yes.” He glanced up at the leaves. “Hope she approves.”

“She’d adore you,” Bucky said. “Even if it was just because you make me so happy. But I think she’d see the same things in you that I do. Bravery, kindness, intelligence. Great sense of humor. You’re a fine catch, Tony. Thank you.”

Tony kissed Bucky again. Then, because if they kept being sappy he was going to tear up and seriously not be able to climb back down, he wiggled his eyebrows ridiculously and said, “Well, I’m happy you’re the one who caught me. Ready to take me home and stuff me properly?”

Bucky laughed, soft and a little wicked. “Oh, I’ll nail you up against the wall any time you want, babydoll.”

Tony started laughing helplessly. “That’s... that’s just terrible. That’s a terrible pun. I can’t live with this. The wedding’s off until the puntax has been paid!”

“Yeah?” Bucky shifted, preparing to climb down. “What sort of currency is acceptable? I’m sure I can come up with a suitable bribe.” He gave Tony a haughty look, “But I’ll have you know, I’m a faithful sort of man. I only have sex with my fiancé.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tony let Bucky help him down a level of branches. Going down was harder than going up. What even the hell. “I’m pretty sure I could talk to him, make a deal with him to get you on loan.”

“I wouldn’t,” Bucky said. “The interest rates are insane. Probably better just to buy outright.”

“Hmm, I dunno. I’m not sure I could afford you. Maybe I’ll ask my boss for a raise.”

Bucky swung down and touched the ground lightly, holding out his arms for Tony. “He’ll probably say no; he’s a little strapped. Got a wedding to pay for and a husband to support. Maybe you should just marry me, sounds like it’ll be easier.”

Tony could have dropped to the ground easily from the lowest branch, but he jumped into Bucky’s arms anyway, and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s neck. “You make a compelling argument,” he admitted, grinning.

“That’s good,” Bucky said. “Pretty sure Sam would turn me down flat. And then I’d have this ring and nothing to do with it.” He grinned back, then threw his head back and whooped. He picked Tony up and swung around in a circle before kissing him soundly. “You said yes!” he crowed. “God, baby, I was so scared. That you’d say it was too soon, or...”

Tony wrapped his arms around his fiancé’s waist and held on tight. “Good thing your Ma taught you to be brave, then.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sunday begins the next full-length story in this AU, Howard's End. Make sure you're subscribed!
> 
> Come and say hello to us on tumblr! ([27dragons](http://27dragons.tumblr.com) | [tisfan](http://tisfan.tumblr.com))


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